A convenience store along I-20 in south Fulton County was heavily damaged early Thursday in an unsuccessful attempt to steal the store’s cash machine.
Witnesses told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that thieves drove a white Toyota Tacoma pickup through the front glass wall of a BP gas station and convenience store on Fulton Industrial Boulevard at I-20 before 4:30 a.m.
Despite making a shambles of the front of the store, the thieves were unable to dislodge the ATM, which was bolted to the floor.
Steven Cohen said he has stopped at the BP “every day for the past nine years” to get his morning coffee.
“I was stirring my coffee, and we heard a loud boom,” said Cohen, a logistics manager for a printing company.
“We thought maybe somebody hit [the store] in reverse by accident,” Cohen said.
“I looked up, saw the truck pull forward, then back up and hit it again,” he said. “At that point, I figured somebody was trying to rob us.”
Cohen said he “ducked down and hid behind the potato chip aisle until I made it back to the cooler and when I got to the cooler, I laid down on the floor in the back corner of the cooler.”
Cohen said he called his wife, and she called 911.
“I was a little afraid, because nowadays, they shoot a lot instead of just robbing,” Cohen said. “They shoot for no reason. I just had my head down, praying that the employee and I were safe after this whole thing.”
That employee, Syed Khader, called the break-in “a bit scary.”
Khader said there were two men inside the dual-cab Tacoma. One, he said, was “completely covered in black, wearing a black face mask.”
A minivan that police believe was also involved was later found abandoned under the I-20 overpass on nearby Langhorn Street.
Khader said he was just thankful that neither he nor Cohen were hurt.
“The best thing is that myself and the customer are still on top of the ground kicking,” he said.
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